


dulce et decorum est (pro amici vivere)

by indigostohelit



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark, F/M, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Recovery, Self-Sacrifice, Survivor Guilt, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 18:16:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2661680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Three for one,” you say. “It’s a good deal.”</p><p>“Is it,” says the image of President Snow, a flickering, shifting piece of light in the midst of rain. One of the Peacekeepers is holding the projector; you can’t see a thing behind the reflection in his visor.</p><p>“It is,” you say. “The Mockingjay. Walking away from - from whatever you want me to have walked away from. I’m coming willingly to the Capitol. All I’m asking is that Peeta and Johanna and Annie go free. That’s it. That’s all.”</p><p>Sacrifice, and aftermath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dulce et decorum est (pro amici vivere)

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains scenes of torture; one moment in a dream which involves body horror; a scene involving partial nudity in a way that invokes nonconsensual sexual power dynamics; briefly discussed suicidal ideation; and recovery from mind control and torture.
> 
> Though it is marked Haymitch/Katniss, their relationship can very easily be interpreted as platonic if the reader prefers.

Coin’s tapping her fingers on the table- one, two, three. There’s nothing in her eyes that shows when she looks at you, not emotion, not thought. Her face is pale in the dimness of the tribunal room, and her hair is striped like- you think of tigers, of predators moving in and out of the shadows, of things with claws.

She says, “Tell us what happened.”

It’s hard to know where to begin.

.

Maybe here:

You’re thirteen years old, and the woods are hot, and dry, and full of dust and the sharp, clean smell of sap. Prim’s at home, and her face is thin. Your mother hasn’t spoken in days. From all the times you’ve bit your lips over the past year, your mouth tastes more or less permanently of blood and salt.

The boy’s next to you. He’s a year or two older than you, you know, but he looks younger; there’s baby fat he hasn’t lost, his face round, dimples in his cheeks when he smiles. He smiles more often than he should.

There’s a bag on your back. It’s heavy, and you shift the strap further over your shoulder; there are parts of you that are beginning to shift and change- your chest is bigger, your hips wider, your balance shifted enough that you’re not quite used to the way you move. It itches at you, the strangeness of your body. With Prim cold and alone in the cottage, and your mother mute and immobile, there ought to be _one_ damn thing in this world you can control-

“I can take that,” says the boy.

You glance at him; his eyebrows are raised, earnest. His body’s changing, too, broader shoulders, some faint pretense at stubble on his lip. He’s told you, unasked for, that he took out thirty tesserae this year.

“I don’t need your help,” you say.

The boy spreads his hands, looks away from you. “Didn’t say you did.”

.

Or begin here:

After all this time, the Capitol is still trying to impress you.

You can always tell when they're trying too hard; it’s not difficult. There’s parties where the Capitol is amusing itself- parties where they pass around squid-ink soup with coral baked into pies, parties where the guests have electronics pulsing green-blue through their teeth and squirming under their eyelids like worms, parties where all the laughter is high and shrieking and guests vanish into the back to vomit up everything they don’t want to remember.

And then there’s times like this; Snow’s laid out a white tablecloth.

There’s chicken, roasted, with the skin on. There’s loaves of bread, crisp and crusted. There’s ribs, dripping with red sauce like blood, and pitchers full of wine, and bowls full of bread and melted cheese. There’s rich brown soup that smells of meat, and thick stew, and corn. There’s apples.

You look at him.

He tilts his head. “Eat.”

“You poisoned it,” you say. Your voice is all rust. Your shoulders are aching from where they pulled you out of Flickerman’s chair.

He smiles with his lips closed, like a snake. “Miss Everdeen. You should be so lucky.”

You’re still hesitating. His hands are folded on the tablecloth; his nails are very clean. He’s still smiling, and he still won’t show his teeth.

“Eat,” he says again. “And then we can begin to discuss what you did.”

.

Or, at last, perhaps here-

-where you’re jolted awake, sudden and startling; you’re tied to a chair in a brightly lit room, your wrists bound down, and you’re tugging at them, you’re tugging, your ankles are tied too, and then there’s a sharp pinch in your arm- your vein? your-

-and then the _pain_ -

-and it’s everywhere it’s everywhere it’s in your blood it’s in your bones it’s in your skin and left and right and your skull and your eyes and you’re on fire you’re on fire your skin is shattering and brittle and burning up your brain

and there’s something crawling there there’s something crawling up your lungs and into your mouth and it has legs like claws and you’re screaming you’re bleeding you must be bleeding there’s no part of your body that isn’t burning there’s no part that isn’t scratching at you like it’s been salted like everything’s fire like you’re being ripped apart by another body there’s nothing of you left there’s nothing in you left

and you’re crying and there’s blood in your mouth and you’ve- bitten your tongue-

-and if you can think that, if you can think that clearly, then- then. There’s less pain, it’s, your entire body is aching and whenever you twitch it sends a shock of pure hurt up your body, but-

-there’s something wet in-

-you’ve wet yourself. You’ve bitten your tongue so hard your mouth is full of blood, and your pants are wet. You’re tied to a chair, and you’re in a brightly lit room, and the pain is, except for the spot in the crook of your elbow where they injected you, fading to a dull throb.

“How are you feeling, Miss Everdeen?” says a voice.

It takes you a long moment to remember the white-bearded man’s name.

.

No. Start here.

Start with this: a sunny day.

A crowd. A stage.

A voice: yours.

“I volunteer,” you say. “I volunteer as tribute.”

It’s the first time you say it. You think, then, it’ll be the last.

.

Look at it this way, Katniss. At least you get to save somebody.

.

When you leave District 13, it’s a cloudy day.

You’ve been locked away from the outside world long enough; you’ve almost forgotten what weather is like. You remember well enough on the first night, though, when the sky opens up and the rain comes down in torrents, turning the dust into mud, sending your teeth chattering and your shoulders shaking. You can’t stop shivering. You can’t stop shivering, you can’t stop shivering, you can’t control your own body, and when you finally drift off to sleep the nightmares come and you can’t even say _no_ to your own damn mind.

It’s Peeta there.

Doesn’t seem like a nightmare, at first. Not much of a nightmare at all.

And then it’s not Peeta any more. It’s a wolf- one of the wolves from the end of your first Games, with the human eyes and the lolling tongues- and you’re holding it in your arms, and you say _no, no, what are you_ , and it looks up at you and laughs and says _hold me fast and fear me not_ , and you push the thing away from you like it’s poison.

And as soon as you let go, it’s Peeta again, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and he says _Katniss, Katniss, why didn’t you save me_ , and then his skin starts to peel away--

You’re woken by the cold.

Your pack is rain-soaked. So are your clothes. You pull the strap over your head, shift it so it lies comfortably on your chest, glance up at the sky.

The clouds are gone. The whole sky is nothing but stars, faint and flickering, like a field of white flowers.

Surely there must be something there for you to navigate by.

.

That’s before.

This is after.

You’re in a dark room.

“Katniss,” says a voice, and you sit up-- fury, fear, panic, is it him, is it the thing that haunts the back of your eyelids, is it the thing you can’t seem to kill, it’s--

-it’s not. It’s a girl. A nurse's assistant, maybe. Her uniform says she works for the Capitol.

She looks familiar-- dark skin, curly black hair in pigtails on each side of her head-- but you can’t seem to remember how you know her, or why. Who she looks like. Who she reminds you of.

“Katniss,” she says, “President Snow wants you,” and you nod, roll upright on your bed.

“I’ll be right there,” you say. Your voice sounds rusty from disuse. You don’t know why. You don’t know a lot of things.

“He says,” the girl says, “he says, look nice. He says, you’re filming something,” and then you see it: on her coat, a flower.

Something about that hair. And the flower. It’s white-- not like the white roses, not like that; it’s small. Something you’d find growing in a field.

“Okay,” you say.

You don’t know what else you can say.

Your head hurts.

.

After- long after- it’s Haymitch who finds you.

It’s only you in the Tribute Building. They’ll tell you, later, that you drove a hard bargain. You were worth it, you said. They’d never get another chance like this, you said. Consider yourself lucky, you said, that I’m only asking for three in exchange for one.

But for now it’s only a door opening, a quiet click. Something small. A lot of your life has happened in small sounds.

He looks older, thinner. His hair is stringy around his face; his eyes are red, as if he hasn’t slept for days. There’s a long cut down his cheekbone.

There are bombs falling outside; you can hear them, but they don’t seem to register, faint background noise on the map of static that is your brain. The windows are lit up, red and yellow. The world is on fire.

When he sees you, his face goes very shocked, then very soft.

He says, “Ah, shit.”

.

It takes a long, long time to walk to the Capitol.

Most of the time you’re only guessing which direction you’re going. It’s in the center of everything; that’s what they taught you as a kid, that’s what they told you on the televisions, which were bright and glittering and which told you nothing except what you already knew you didn’t want to hear. A heart is in the center of the body, they said. A brain is in the center of the head, they said.

You’d been eleven years old. Your father had just died, and your mother had been gone. There was nothing in the center of your body, you thought. Nothing except emptiness.

If Haymitch had known you then, he would have laughed like a hyena at that.

But you walk, and you walk, and you walk. You navigate by stars; the North Star never moves, the sun sets in the west and rises in the east, moss grows on the north side of trees. You know these things-- you’ve lived outdoors long enough, you’d be ashamed of yourself if you didn’t.

And you’re surprised, often, at how well you seem to know the country, even those parts of it you’ve never touched or seen; you’re surprised at how well it seems to fit you, like a glove, like an old friend. As if you’ve been there before-- and you think of the arenas, of the woods, of those parts of Panem that you have walked and memorized and loved.

Sun in the morning, North Star at night. Follow the yellow brick road. Keep moving forward.

Here’s a fun game: pretend to yourself that you’re going home.

.

In the new District 13, no one will meet your eyes.

There are flags hung everywhere; there are parties, people crying, people laughing. It makes sense. Haven’t you heard there’s a war won?

But they go silent when you pass by. You can feel their gaze on your back; you don’t look at them. There’s still things you don’t remember, things you never will, parts of your mind that shriek and glitch when you brush against them, like a video broadcast that’s been permanently hacked. You’re holding yourself together one piece at a time.

When you walk through the crowds with Haymitch, he glances from side to side to the silent crowds, back at you; you can see the wheels turning behind his eyes. When you reach the cafeteria, he tilts his head at you, offers a harsh smile.

“You rather they cheer for you like you just won the Hunger Games? You still wanna be the celebrity? The champion?”

You don’t say anything.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, piles bread and soup and apples on his tray. The war’s won. District 13 is the district of plenty, now. “Being a victor, sweetheart, they always told me it was a lifetime job. Figures you’d be the one who’s lucky enough to retire.”

.

“That sounds _barbaric_ ,” says Caesar Flickerman, earnestly.

“It,” you say, look away. “Yeah. Really barbaric. Um, they. They don’t even let people wear different clothes. Or drink. Or have cats.”

“Would you say, Katniss,” Flickerman breathes, “that the _real_ repressive regime in Panem--”

“Yeah,” you say, and turn to the camera. “If there’s a real repressive regime in Panem, it’s the rebels. That’s. That’s why I’m speaking out against them today.”

.

It takes you a long, long time to recover.

You don’t remember most of it. They tell you, though, that it’s slow, that it’s painful. Physical recuperation, some of it-- you have broken bones, you have-- there’s a part of your kneecap that’s irreparable. You’ll walk with a cane for the rest of your life.

Mental recuperation is the rest. That’s the part you really don’t remember.

Your memories come back in trickles, like a river just beginning to run again after years of drought. White flowers. A large, beautiful house. Berries.

Some things never do come back; those things you have to take at face value, just believe what the doctors and Haymitch tell you is true. The face you can barely remember, the one with the curly hair and the grin, something to do with feathers-- that one was named Cinna. The word Beetee, which keeps floating up in your mind along with an image of glasses, has to do with someone who they say was a friend of yours. Being afraid of fire, that’s something they planted in your brain. Hating cats, that’s not.

Some things they never tell you. There’s a boy in your memories, with faint stubble on his upper lip, offering to carry your bag; you’ve asked about him, and they won’t tell you his name. They only look away.

And then there’s the day that they show you a picture of a boy, golden-haired with a soft smile, dressed in white, and you-

You wake up tied to a bed. There’s cuts in your palm from where your nails dug into them.

It takes five months for the regime to allow you to go out among the general population.

It takes a minute and a half for you to say, “Where’s Johanna?”

.

“Three for one,” you say. “It’s a good deal.”

“Is it,” says the image of President Snow, a flickering, shifting piece of light in the midst of rain. One of the Peacekeepers is holding the projector; you can’t see a thing behind the reflection in his visor.

“It is,” you say. “The Mockingjay. Walking away from- from whatever you want me to have walked away from. I’m coming willingly to the Capitol. All I’m asking is that Peeta and Johanna and Annie go free. That’s it. That’s all.”

“And I’m to believe that there’s no bomb strapped to your chest,” says President Snow. He’s grinning, that odd, unsettling grin that always seems to mean he knows something you don’t. You hate him, at that moment, more than you’ve ever hated anyone. “No recording device in your ear. That you just decided all on your own to walk away.”

You stare at the flickering screen for a moment; then you reach up with cold-numb fingers to the zipper of your jacket, unzip it. Unbutton the buttons of your shirt, one by one.

“No bomb strapped to my chest,” you say. “No recording device. Nothing on me.”

Snow pauses for a long moment.

“You give yourself up willingly,” he says.

“In exchange for Peeta,” you say. “And Johanna. And Annie.”

He tilts his head. His teeth are very white, and his smile is very wide. “Whatever you say, Miss Everdeen.”

.

“Where are they,” you say. “Where are they where are they where are they. Where’s Johanna, where’s Annie, where’s-- where did they go. What happened to them. What happened to them, what did you, what-”

“What the fuck do you _think_ happened to them, sweetheart,” Haymitch says, and this is the first time in these long five months, God, that you’ve seen him genuinely angry. “What do you think happened, you empty-headed little-”

You swing at him. He grabs your fist, pushes you back, up against the wall.

“What the fuck did you think was going to happen to them,” he says. “What the fuck did you think you were _doing_.”

“I thought,” you say, and then you shake your head, because even now, what you thought is half-speculation on your part, barely memory, barely thought, if it was ever thought in the first place-

“You thought,” he says, and shakes his head. Your hand is still pressed against the wall; his eyes are, unexpectedly, wet.

“You don’t think shit, Katniss,” he says. “You never thought a day in your life.”

He drops your hand, turns away.

.

Look at it this way, Katniss. You didn’t get to save anybody.

But hey, at least the war is over.

.

“That’s all,” you say. You can’t meet Coin’s eyes.

She sighs. Her fingers are still drumming on the table: one, two, three.

“We’ll consider this the official tribunal,” she says. “Katniss Everdeen, you are found guilty of crimes against Panem and for treachery to District 13.”

Across the table from her, Haymitch goes very still.

“And pardoned,” says Coin. “Consider yourself on permanent parole.” Her eyes are still very blank; you can’t tell a thing that’s going on behind them.

“Thank you, ma’am,” you say.

She tilts her head. Then she says, “You’re lucky there are people in this room that thought you were still too valuable to kill.”

When you turn to limp out of the room, you can feel two pairs of eyes watching you go.

.

They don’t tell you about the new Hunger Games, at first.

You find out about it when you see it on television. There are people clustered around one, their smiles wide and ugly; when they see you they go silent as usual, shuffle to the side so you can slowly make your way through. And on the television screen you see-

-she looks familiar.

You think for a heart-stopping moment that this is someone you’ve forgotten, that it’s the girl named Rue, that it’s your sister, the one you volunteered for, Primrose- but it can’t be, it can’t be either of those, they’re both long dead, and besides, the person she looks like is you. With a long braid fallen over her right shoulder; she’s carrying a bow like she’s got no idea what to do with it, and her eyes are wide.

“President Snow’s granddaughter,” says a voice behind you, and you turn. Haymitch’s hands are in his pockets; he always seems to have bags under his eyes, these days.

“C’mon,” he says. “If you wanna watch, I got a better television than this.”

“Sounds fantastic,” you say.

“Don’t get smart with me,” he says, and you follow him.

.

You’re twelve years old.

The Peacekeeper has his visor up; he’s an old man, you don’t know his name, you need to know it, you promise yourself you’ll learn it. You’ve seen him at the Hob; he’s a friendly one, he must be.

“You can only take out three tesserae,” he says, in what passes for a kindly tone. “One for each member of your family, dear. That brings you to a total of four entries. Unless you’ve taken out tesserae before?”

“I’m twelve,” you say, gritted-out and quiet.

“Then four it is,” he says, and shrugs.

“We can’t do four,” you say. “We can’t survive on four, we- I can’t go home and tell my mom that I only get to bring home four tesserae worth of food, I can’t tell that to my sister. Don’t do that. Don’t-”

“What _is_ the issue,” says a woman’s voice; it’s someone with a tremendous wig, silver and sparkling, and lips pink as salmon. She’s got a Capitol accent, and your stomach goes tight.

“This little girl here wants to take out more tesserae than she’s allowed,” says the Peacekeeper. His smile is jovial.

The woman smiles at you; her wig really is hideous. There’s lipstick on her teeth.

“It’s so wonderful that you’re so _enthusiastic_ for the Games,” she says, “but darling, no more tesserae allowed, we have to make it fair for the other children. Here,” and her smile gets wider, “how about this, next year we let you take out eight tesserae. How does that sound?”

You stare at her.

“ _Wonderful_ ,” she says. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing much, much more of each other- may the odds be _ever_ in your favor-”

.

You’re fifteen. Prim’s eleven.

“We run away,” you say. “We take her and we run away. Take off into the woods. Hunt for our food.”

The boy with the stubble on his lip- it’s more than just his lip, now, and it’s not the same awkward adolescence as it was; he’s grown into his body, and his eyes are hard and old- twitches his lips. “And my brothers and sisters too,” he says.

You rest your face in your hands, push at your eyelids until they’re a field of stars. “Sure,” you say. “And your brothers and sisters too. And my useless mom, and everybody from the Hob, and the whole goddamn District. We take them all.”

“Yeah,” says the boy. “Damn right, we do.”

.

You say, "Did you vote for it."

Haymitch says, “It wasn’t up to me.”

“ _Bullshit_ it wasn’t up to you,” you say, hot and tight and furious. “Bullshit, bullshit, you’re on their little council thing, you have a vote. You’re- they listen to you, you’re the only one left who actually survived the Games.”

“It _wasn’t up to me_ ,” he says, and you look at him and see again the greyness under his eyes, the gauntness of his face. “It was- yeah, Katniss, what do you want me to say? I had a vote. I plant my ass on a chair at their damn table. But a vote doesn’t mean as much as it seems like it does, sweetheart, not on that council.”

He meets your eyes; you look away. “There’s only so many times I can convince ‘em to lend leniency to traitors,” he says. It’s half dry sarcasm and half exhaustion.

“You shouldn’t have,” you say.

In the corner of your eye, he shrugs. “Maybe so,” he says. “Maybe I shouldn’t have.” There’s a pause, and then: “I told ‘em they should- I told them there were other voices they oughta take into account.” He glances at you again. “I’m not the only one left who survived the Games.”

“Yes,” you say. “Yes, you are.”

.

Caesar Flickerman nods solemnly. “And if you could send a message to the rebels,” he says, “what would you say to them? What do you want them to know?”

You turn to the camera, fold your hands in your lap. You’ve never been very good at playing a part.

“Peeta,” you say. “Peeta, they’re coming, they’re planning an air strike. You have to get out of there. You have to-”

.

Look at it this way, Katniss. You didn’t get to save anybody.

But at least you tried.

.

“And if you’d been there,” Haymitch says, much later, on the couch in his quarters in front of the Hunger Games, “if you’d had your seat at that table, Miss Righteous, you want to tell me you’d have voted no?”

You can’t stop staring at the television screen. The girl with the braid like yours is bleeding from her neck.

“You can’t tell me this is right,” you say. “You can’t tell me- it’s sick, Haymitch. You know how sick.”

“Here’s what I can tell you,” says Haymitch, and meets your eyes for the first time- and god, god, there’s something _dead_ in them, something flat that shouldn’t be there. “I can tell you that you disappeared, sweetheart, without telling anyone where you were going. I can tell you I came to fetch you for a meeting with President Coin and your bed was empty. I can tell you we thought you were dead for _weeks_.”

“I-” you say.

“Shut the fuck up,” says Haymitch, almost mild. “And next time you show up, next time we see you, you’re telling us to lay down our weapons. And it turns out you _walked_ all the way to the Capitol. And it turns out we ain’t got a Mockingjay, after all- and Coin, she’s all ready to declare you a traitor and say you were a double agent all along, isn’t she. And I’m the only person in the whole damn District who says, maybe she’s got reasons for what she did. Shitty reasons, yeah, but that’s just because she’s still the same stubborn ass she always was."

You're lost for words; he sneers at you, ugly and bitter. "You want to know what I can tell you. I can tell you I put my goddamn life on the line to make sure they brought you back alive. I can tell you I saw you dead once too many times already. I can tell you that I voted _yes_ , damn right I did, they called for ayes and I put my hand in the air, and I'd do it again, because if I vote the wrong way then they stop listening to me, and if they stop listening to me they stop caring what happens to you. I can tell you that I ain't seeing you dead again."

You say, “I’m sorry.”

“No,” says Haymitch. “No, sweetheart, no, you ain’t. You’d do it again tomorrow. You’d do it every day of your life, if there was still anyone in the world you loved who weren’t dead.”

He’s looking at you, and that dead thing in his eyes is stirring, almost a question. The moment stretches, on and on.

You look away.

“Yeah,” he says, and grins, ugly. “That’s what I thought.”

“I didn’t mean to-” you say, and can’t finish the sentence.

“Do me a favor,” he says. “Do me a couple favors, actually, huh? Next time you take it into your head to make a stupid decision like that, don’t let me find out about it from goddamn national TV.”

“What’s the second favor?” you say.

“Second favor,” he says, “is get the hell out of my apartment.”

.

None of the Peacekeepers come to tell you that your father is dead.

That’s the job of Greasy Sae, who finds you after school, holds your hands, goes down on one knee. An accident, she says. Unavoidable, she says. Dozens of people killed. A major event. A headline. Your father.

When was it, you say.

She looks thrown; you’re not crying. When- she says. This morning.

This morning, you say.

Yes, she says. Katniss-

Next time, you say, you won’t be told hours after it happens. Next time you’ll be there. Next time you’ll take the explosion instead of them. Next time you’ll keep them safe yourself.

Katniss, she says, it doesn’t work that way.

.

You sit down at the cafeteria; he looks up, then looks down, almost bored.

“What’re you doing here,” he says.

“I thought he was just going to kill me,” you say. “I thought he was going to kill me and let them go. I thought he was going to slit my throat somewhere quiet, away from the cameras.”

“Don’t make you any less a traitor to the cause,” says Haymitch. “Don’t make you any less a traitor to the new regime.”

“When have I ever given a shit about the cause,” you say, bitter. “When has the _cause_ ever been my priority.”

Haymitch is looking into his cup; you know it’s just water in there, but from the way his fingers curl around it, tight and careful, it might as well be whiskey. He’s holding it like it’s something too precious to break, something he can’t let go.

“That’s why you went so willing,” he says.

“I thought I was going to die,” you say, and shake your head, shake your head. You can’t stop shaking. “I thought I was finally going to get to die.”

“Yeah,” says Haymitch, and takes a long, deep swig from his cup. “Well. Ain’t things been disappointing all round.”

.

But:

Maybe this is where it ends.

They’ve built parks, the new regime. Arenas, yes; palaces, Cornucopias, little white rooms far underground with tracker jackers buzzing in cages. But parks, too. And one in District 12.

It’s a clear night.

“I thought you might be here,” you say.

He looks up at you; he’s got a bottle of whiskey, clenched in his fist. It's still sealed and full. “Did you,” he says.

“I did,” you say, and ease yourself down gently, prop your cane on the bench's armrest. Your breath is steaming out into the air. Winter’s not here yet, but it’s not far away.

For some time, you sit in silence. He doesn’t touch the whiskey bottle; you don’t take your hands out of your pockets. The streetlights are flickering yellow-white across the graveled paths, and the long silhouettes of ferns are waving against the paler darkness of the sky. You glance up, out of habit; the North Star hasn’t moved, not yet.

“Why’re you here?” he says.

You shrug. “Not much for me in District 13.”

“Yeah, well,” says Haymitch, “not much for most people in District 13.”

“You’d think there’d be something for you,” you say, “war hero. You’re telling me they didn’t want to give you a place in the new world order? Finding Capitol traitors? Bringing the good news of the revolution to little District 7 villages, then telling them their daily quotas haven’t changed?”

“That’s traitor talk,” says Haymitch. He’s smiling.

“You used to like it when I talked traitor,” you say, and you’re smiling, too.

There’s a pause. You say, “So there’s nothing to do in District 13.”

“And there ain’t much to do outside of it,” says Haymitch. He cuts his eyes at you. “Or against it, Mockingjay.”

“Fine,” you say. “What then?” There’s a pause. “C’mon,” you say, “you’re the mentor. Where do we go from here?”

“There’s an old saying,” says Haymitch, “older than old, older than-- well, you don’t even know. Goes _dulce est decorum est pro patria mori_. It is good and pleasant to die for your country. Roughly translated, you understand.”

You huff out a startled, disbelieving laugh; Haymitch’s lips twitch up. “Right,” he says. “And then I heard, _dulce est decorum est pro amici mori_. And that sounded a little better, even if it weren’t quite my style.”

“What’s that one mean?” you say.

Haymitch says, “It is good and pleasant to die for the people you love.”

You take your hands out of your pockets at last, rub them together for warmth, huff on them. All around you, night is falling. The stars are sharp and flickering overhead.

Haymitch shakes his head. “Don’t think that’s right either,” he says. “Don’t think it’s any righter than the first one.”

“Well then, goddamn, Haymitch,” you say, half-laughing, “what the hell did you bring it up for?”

You look over at him; his eyes are closed, and he’s smiling.

“You said you wanted to know where we go from here," he says. "My one word of advice? Stay alive.”

Your breath hisses out into the frozen air for a long, long time.

“It’s cold,” you say, eventually. “Let’s go someplace warm.”

“All right,” says Haymitch. "Sounds good to me."

.

Look at it this way, Katniss.

Maybe this is what saving people looks like, after all.


End file.
